The New Tesla Big Rig Meets With Skepticism

We all have the same iconic image of semi-trucks in our mind: monstrous trucks burning diesel and hauling gigantic loads of cargo cross-country, driving hours upon hours without stop. Well, that image could be changing soon.

According to Elon Musk, the Chief Executive of Tesla Inc., Tesla has plans to unveil the first electric semi-truck in September.

This news is being met with skepticism from many trucking companies. While the benefits of lower emissions are obvious and understood, there are still some hurdles that need to be addressed before the trucking community will be able to embrace this new technology.

These electric semi-trucks will be expensive. The cost of purchasing and maintaining them is difficult to estimate now and the trucking community will need to be able to see that this will not disturb their profit margin.

We do not currently have charging stations all across the country that can handle semi-trucks. The time these trucks are on the road will probably be lessened by several hours due to their battery life. Along with this, the amount of time required to recharge the batteries would drastically extend many delivery times.

While Tesla has plans for these semi-trucks to eventually become an autonomous vehicle, that is still several years away. The electric semi-trucks will still need a driver for the time being.

Nobody seems to know what these all-electric semi-trucks will look like, but we are all definitely curious and probably have pretty similar "George Jetson" extremely futuristic images in our mind.